The Week in Review
Assuming a new, prominent role as ranking minority member on the Senate Budget Committee, Sanders held a Capitol Hill news conference on Friday to lay out his priorities. Sanders on Tuesday filed an amendment that would put the Senate on record acknowledging that climate change is being caused by humans and is a major threat to the planet. Sanders discussed those and other issues on Friday during his weekly radio and Internet appearance on The Thom Hartmann Program.
Listen to The Thom Hartmann Program
Budget Priorities Sanders told reporters his priorities include expanding Social Security, resisting cuts to social programs and pushing to increase spending on infrastructure. He also warned that benefits for the disabled and their children could face a 20 percent cut next year if the Senate follows the lead of House Republicans. A new House rule creates a legal obstacle course that would make it harder to shift funds from the Social Security retirement account, which has a big surplus, to the smaller disability account. Such transfers have been done routinely in the past under both Republican and Democratic presidents.
Global Warming Sanders on Tuesday filed an amendment that would put the Senate on record acknowledging that climate change is being caused by humans and is a major threat to the planet. Sanders plans to offer the amendment to a bill that would force approval of the Keystone XL pipeline. The controversial project would ship oil from Canada’s tar sands region in Alberta to refineries in Texas along the Gulf of Mexico. A New York Times editorial writer called Sanders’ resolution “a beauty of an amendment.” Sanders discussed his proposal in an interview Friday with CBS News. More than 40,000 of you have taken a poll on the tar sands pipeline and nearly 96 percent say it should not be built because it would pose a serious threat to the environment.
Hottest Year on Record The globally average temperature over land and ocean surfaces for 2014 was the highest among all years since record keeping began in 1880, according to a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration report on Friday. The December combined global land and ocean average surface temperature was also the highest on record. An independent analysis also released Friday by NASA scientists also found 2014 to be the warmest on record.
Pope Francis on Global Warming Pope Francis spoke out on man-made global warming during an exchange with reporters traveling with him to the Philippines. “I don’t know if it (human activity) is the only cause, but mostly, in great part, it is man who has slapped nature in the face. We have in a sense taken over nature … I think we have exploited nature too much. Thanks be to God that today there are voices, so many people who are speaking out about it.”
